Daily Reviews Summary 07/16/08

The case is virtually a tool free design, in fact with the exception of the screws I used for the PSU installation. Managing the cable and wiring was a snap and Thermaltake even provided the cable management supplies and need space in the chassis. Installation in the Thermaltake Armor+ MX was simply the easiest I have done in a while.

Looking for a USB flash drive that won't fall apart the first time you drop it? Ian checks out the Xporter XT from Patriot Memory and runs the drive through a series of tests to bring you an in depth analysis of this drives performance and features. At a very low price find out if this drive is worth your money.

Western Digital is well known to system builders and end users for providing excellent storage solutions matched with a good warranty and support. I only recommend two hard drive manufactures to people, Western Digital is one of them (the other being Seagate). The latest and greatest things in terms of technology have moved out of the computer case and into portable storage. The My Passport Studio comes in at 250GB and this one is preformatted for Mac. Don't let that scare you, though.

With the need for a steady and stable supply of power to fuel the most power hungry of PCs nowadays, we are starting to see an increasing number of power supplies with high wattages that claim stability and silence as well. One such product is the Tuniq Miniplant, which boasts an impressive 950W of power and was for a time the highest wattage PSU in the 80+ category of standard PS2 sized units. Today I will be taking this one for a spin to see just how efficient and quiet it really is.

If you're spending your hard earned cash on the new DDR3 standard, then you expect nothing short of stable, dependable performance whether you're using a 32-bit or 64-bit system. The memory must be reliable if you just play games or if your system is a serious number crunching SETI beast. The Patriot Viper 4GB PC3-12800 Dual Channel Memory Kit thoroughly tested here offered nothing short of those expectations. The memory is fully backward compatible with your 1066 MHz and 1333 MHz Core 2 series Intel processors. The extra performance gained from the memory's timings at lower 6-6-6-18 setting should be a pleasant bonus which also equates to plenty of bandwidth.

TekNmotion Pulsar SX is the name of a brand new headset aimed at gamers. The Pulsar SX features a USB sound card, vibration feature, and blue lights. This headset has a lot of unique features and costs a mere $59.99 which is cheap considering the integrated USB sound card.

Contact coolers, where the heatpipes are in /direct contact/ with the processor's heat spreader are becoming more and more popular, and today's heatsink review is a prime example of this new approach to heatsink design.

Previous direct contact coolers we've reviewed, like the OCZ Vendetta, have produced impressive performance for their size and cost, so can the Core-Contact Freezer continue the trend when the technology is implemented on larger heatsinks?

In some regards, the Core-Contact surprisingly doesn't use the same Tuniq branding even though people currently associate the Tuniq name with admirable heatsinks like the Tower 120. Is Sunbeam confident enough that the Core Contact can win people over without this association? It's time to find out.

Today we are going to preview a dual-GPU monster based on R700, the ATI RADEON HD 4870 X2 (R700) 2x1024MB. This article is exclusive enough, because the official announcement is scheduled only to August.

Today we are taking a look at a cool gaming device from Novint, named Falcon. This new device will be gamebreaking if the features and hype about it are correct. It is a "mouse" for gaming but it allows you to do so much more with a force feedback function and a free movement. It's hard to explain further without pictures so lets take a closer look.

Almost five years ago, Intel promoted its first uniform solution attended for notebooks, under the brand - Centrino. This brand was launched with intention to consolidate a position of Intel on notebook's market as number one. Many people are making a mistake if they think that Centrino is some Intel processor attended for notebooks and is based on "rocket science" technology. Centrino consolidates processor, chipset, integrated GPU (graphic processor), network subsystem that supports 100Mbit/1Gbit LAN connection and also an optional WiFi adapter.

Just recently OCZ released a new and improved version of their award winning Vendetta CPU cooling solution aptly named the Vendetta 2. While this name is not what you would call imaginative, we certainly understand why they would want to keep such a distinguished brand name alive. Unlike the original model which also had an exposed heatpipe base but was only sized for a 92mm fan, the Vendetta 2 is a full size 120mm design but it has kept the unique double V look and feel of the original.

After publishing the first quarterly comparison article of the series, our methodology was adjusted to include test results with both reference and performance cooling fans. A follow-up article comparing the Vendetta 2 vs TRUE vs HDT-S1283 was later published using the new methods, and the results more accurately illustrated the performance an overclocking enthusiast might receive compared to someone who buys the product and uses it in the stock form.

Benchmark Reviews strives to offer the overclocker and hardware enthusiast community solid evidence reflecting the true performance of computer products through rigorous testing and evaluation. I personally understand that many readers who visit Benchmark Reviews have been involved with other community websites for years, and therefore take our test results personally. So now that our test process has been reworked, we have collected the most complete source of benchmark results possible and gathered in a controlled environment. The purpose of this second article of our series is to document performance and declare the best CPU coolers available as of Q2 2008.

A few short weeks ago NVIDIA released to the masses a GPU that redfined high-end gaming. The GTX 260 and GTX 280 has taken gamers to new levels of performance that were out of reach only eight short months ago. Of course, this level of performance doesn't come cheap and many people have a hard time swallowing the cost of these cards that ranged anywhere from $400 USD all the way up to $650 USD. Thankfully in the past few days we have seen substantial price reductions bringing the GTX 280 within the reach of many more gamers. With 240 unified stream processors and a 512-bit wide memory bus there is a lot to like about this card. When a company like Leadtek jumps in and starts offering this card then that becomes the icing on the cake. With lots of accessories and a free game, Leadtek is positioning themselves to offer a top notch product with all the extras we've come to expect from the high end.

Over the years I have become accustomed to gaming at what I thought was an awesome resolution: 1280 x 1024. However, as soon as I fired up my favorite game, World of Warcraft, on this 1920x1200 monitor, I realized that I had been missing a lot. Not only did I have the additional viewing angle, giving me the ability to see farther to either side of my character, I also had plenty of room to add custom interface elements without making my UI look overly cluttered. I also played Counter Strike: Source using the huge resolution and really enjoyed the immersion and added range of view that the high resolution provided.

You’d think we would have looked at all 9600GT cards on the market, but I can guarantee there are more out there. The particular one we’re looking at today comes from ASUS and carries with it a silent cooler. We’ve seen GIGABYTE offer the 9600GT in silent form, sporting both 512MB and 1GB of GDDR3. MSI also has a card where the fan only spins when the card needs it. During our testing, however, the fan never actually spun.

Silent cards are becoming quite the rage and everyone wants good performance without any noise. In the past, the design used to be reserved for low-end cards, but these days we seem to be able to get a good performing card that outputs not a single dB. In the highly competitive market that is the 9600GT, we will today see if ASUS are able to do anything that helps them stand out from the pack and if it’s a card worth looking at.